I'm sorry, this was impossible for me to read due to the little boxes everywhere. By the way, planets are large masses of earth and atmosphere, and despite the agility of the Mantas they cannot be "quickly flown around."
If Escape Velocity were actually happen, ships would enter the system at different places, so I doubt that the planet would be right in front of it, either.

Bryan chapter 3 . 1/7/2004

Not bad, not bad, although Argosies aren't known for their great missile-dodging ability. "Hot flames" is also a little redundant, as I haven't heard of "cold flames" anywhere.
Frigates don't have pilots, anyways. They're large heavily-crewed ships that would probably have a captain, a navigator, etc. I could be wrong, since it's been quite a while since I'e played the game.

Bryan chapter 2 . 1/7/2004

Pirates taking over two well-armed powers is a little ambitious, no? They'd have to have some great connections. Let's assume that Pirates are well-organized enough to have 100 Kestrels in their fleet, which is probably the most they're going to have, considering not many pirates have 10 M laying around. Throw in... say, ten thousand lesser ships-a generous figure, and you'll go up against thousands of better-armed capital-class warships, not to mention their lesser ships.
I realize that this is only a part of the story, but you may want to keep this in mind for the next part.

Bryan chapter 1 . 1/7/2004

This wasn't a bad story idea, but your storytelling ability is somewhat lacking. In most of the story, it can be pretty much translated as, "This happened, then this happened, then this happened, then that happened, then she was that and she was this, blah blah blah." You need to give your sentences variation in their length, otherwise you're going to sound like a robot.
One good thing that you did was paragraph seperation-I find that extremely annoying when the person clumps it all together into one big paragraph. Your paragraphs expressed only one idea: very good.
In your story, the main character sounds like she joined up with the Rebels simply because she wanted to fight. If you wanted to fight, wouldn't you want to be on the winning side? ...UNLESS, she's got a personal grudge against the Confederates, or she was raised by a soldier in the Rebel army, or her trading business suffered greatly from Confederation taxes. You get the idea.
Pirates were barring the doorway. “Don’t move, Rebels. We’ve had enough of you. You’re going DOWN.” -This is a good example of bad storytelling. Instead of saying it like that, I would've put something to the effect of:
She started for the doorway, but three scruffy-looking men barred her way. From their arrogant stance, their vast array of weaponry and their unshaved faces she assumed that they must be pirates. The one in the center, apparently the leader, stepped forward and smirked.
"You ain't goin' nowhere, pretty," he said with a self-assured grin. He raised his voice and addressed everyone. "Your asses are ours now, scum. We've had enough of your interfering with our business, so we're interfering with yours. Toss over your weapons or be shot."

No, I don't think that I write perfect stories. I love negative criticism! I give it all the time ( ha, haven't you noticed?) It's the insults that don't help the writer, a.k.a calling me an idiot. Also "gorw! up?". That sounds like high horse, downward- looking snobbery to me. And while many CP do correct, others flame. These are the people that don't belong. Oh, and sorry about your ""writer's cramp"".